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Overland Bandit Encounters

Discussion in 'Wishlist Requests' started by Anpu, Jul 24, 2021.

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  1. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

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    The overland bandit encounters have always come across as something that was added but never really finished, and just kind of comes across as underwhelming.

    In running around and documenting all the various overland encounters, I think this one was set up as a sort of entry level overland encounter. It's not entirely too difficult and is a good entry point for new players to start exploring overland encounters.

    Currently various random low level bandits and trained wolves will be in the scene (Archer, Wizard, Thug and Trained Wolf). After activating the wave battle, several random bandits will enter the wave battle (Archer, Wizard, Thug and Trained Wolf). These have the same exact name, same exact look but are much higher level. This is the part that seems a bit underwhelming. This is also the same thing for the Red Sash Bandit encounters. They are also set up the same similar way.

    As a suggestion, after activating the wave battle the following creatures could now enter the wave battle (just use the same random selection you currently use):
    Bandit Assasin (Archer)
    Bandit Mauler (Melee)
    Bandit Sorcerer (Wizard)
    Trained Obsidian Wolf

    The 3 higher level bandits would also be wearing a different armor set to at least differentiate them from the same bandits we see every single day. You have hundreds of incredible looking armors sets, is there some limitation the NPC characters can't use them? And the Trained Obsidian Wolf would just use the existing Obsidian Wolf model.

    This at least would give the player a sense of oh crap! What the hell are these things? And that probably they might need to be a bit more cautious. And possibly at least some sense of satisfaction on defeating these different bandits (if they can).

    And the last thing, in the current bandit overland encounter, the higher level Trained Wolves are the single most dangerous creatures in the scene. It seems when this wave battle was balanced they just added these incredibly overpowered wolves to the scene to make them dangerous, but not the actual bandits? I would expect the bandits themselves to be the more dangerous creatures in this scene and the trained wolves as some supplementary damage dealers.

    This is just some of my thoughts. ideas, suggestions I've had on these over the years. I do feel just a little tweaking to this scene would just be a nice touch thing. Nothing really high priority.

    Thanks for your time!
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2021
    Anpu, Jul 24, 2021
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    Wilfred, Cordelayne, Elgarion and 4 others like this.
  2. Toular

    Toular Avatar

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    And cause the players with lower-level characters to gain a point of compassion by "allowing" the third wave baddies to live. (Or would it be lose a point of valor?)
     
    Toular, Jul 24, 2021
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  3. Sannio

    Sannio Lead Quest and Level Designer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    The bandit encounters were among the first to be created, which is why they're the most "vanilla." But I'm not opposed to reviewing them and making some tweaks.

    In the early days, Bzus and I had a plan for giving different enemies of each tier their own names. This plan fell apart as we started getting more types of enemies, and so many more tiers. In some ways, we fell into a pattern of naming enemies types based on their fighting style and disregarded their tier. Older enemies still retain some unique names, but later enemy types share them across tiers.

    NPCs don't wear avatar clothing. Each NPC model is a single mesh. Even the colors are "baked into" the NPC and can't be changed unless the art itself is changed. Only their weapons are separate items. There are a few exceptions, like when we add a player hat to an automaton or change a wizard's staff, but no exceptions include swapping out armor.

    We probably didn't have bandits of the same high-tier as the wolves at the time.

    I'll review the bandit encounters and see if some tweaks can be made. Nothing too drastic, since they're still meant to be more basic than other encounters, but it's probably past time for them to get a bit of lovin'.
     
    Sannio, Jul 26, 2021
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